


the story of what the night is thinking

by restlesslikeme



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Other, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 05:54:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/restlesslikeme/pseuds/restlesslikeme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They find the Winter Soldier in a warehouse in DC with blood under his fingernails and no memory of either of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the story of what the night is thinking

**Author's Note:**

> There's some brief consensual rough play (a strike to the face, hair pulling) and mentions of canon brainwashing. Twisting and skewing of other canon. I'm really into this ship lately, so I hope someone else will get some enjoyment out of it as well! Title belongs to Siken. Thanks to Liz for the proofreading.

The first time they sleep together it's after a mission; Natasha is walking with him because their S.H.I.E.L.D. issued quarters are in the same direction, and when Steve stops in front of his doorway she pauses as well, her hands at her sides and her gaze as steady as ever.

He doesn’t know who initiates it, just that suddenly they’re kissing, fierce and hard, and before he knows it after that they’re on the bed. Natasha holds his wrists above his head while she grinds her hips down on him and when he tilts her head back and just drags oxygen into her lungs it reminds Steve of someone in a way that aches right through his bones. When he pulls a hand away from her grasp to grip in her hair she smacks him hard across the face.

“Shit,” Steve laughs, breathless and wild, tasting iron as Natasha pauses above him, watching. He pulls her hair hard enough that she whimpers, and then, “Again.”

Afterwards, she offers to take the first watch and let him sleep, and Steve wonders if he left one war behind just to be woken up in the middle of another one. He wonders if Natasha's more soldier than she lets on.

 

-x-

 

Natasha isn’t ice, she's a forest fire or a hurricane, and Steve has been around long enough to know that this is rarely understood. Natasha could melt away the freezing winters of Russia if she wanted to, and when Steve finally kisses her for real he tastes ashes on her tongue.

 

-x-

 

She discovers the dossiers, the yellowed photographs, tucked neatly into a box under his cot, and when she looks up at him Steve sees himself mirrored in her expression.

"James," she says, and Steve's world stops.

 

-x-

 

“We’re going to bring him back,” Steve whispers in the dark, his arms around her, her hands on his chest.

She nods and the movement is slow, as if she’s thinking, preparing herself for something.

He tilts her chin up, tries to mimic the head-on look the he admires in her, and smooths back her hair. He says, “This doesn’t change anything,” and holds her gaze until he sees her smile.

 

-x-

 

They find the Winter Soldier in a warehouse in DC with blood under his fingernails and no memory of either of them.

Natasha goes over the safehouse they bring him to for bugs because this isn’t official business and it isn’t the kind of absence they want to explain, and if S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to look for them, they’re damn well going to have to try harder than that.

Natasha talks to him first, then Steve, then both of them together. After three days of Bucky’s eyes being dead, Steve puts his fist through the wall. Natasha bandages his split knuckles and kisses the hard line of his shoulders and whispers to him in Russian until Steve buries his face into her hair and cries for the first time in what feels like decades.

In the basement, the Winter Soldier sits ramrod straight and silent as ever.

 

-x-

 

Steve sits on the floor and tells him stories of the things they did, the places they’ve been. He tells him about France and the Howling Commandos, about their tiny apartment in Brooklyn. He tells him the story Natasha told him about her stint as a ballerina. 

Then one day he looks up, and Bucky is looking back at him.

“I thought you were dead,” Bucky rasps. Suddenly Natasha is in the doorway, her eyes flicking between the two of them before she’s next to Steve, her trembling hand finding his.

“Jesus Christ,” she says.

“Is someone gonna fuckin’ tell me what’s going on, then?” Bucky says, and he’s trying to be brave but it comes out as a sob, low and throaty and lost. 

Steve undoes the rope around his wrists and Bucky collapses into Natasha’s arms, and then Steve is there too. She clutches them both fiercely to her; her fingers hot and familiar in their hair while the three of them shudder and shake like it’s the middle of winter.

“It’s okay,” Steve tells them, his voice unfamiliar to his own ears. “It’s going to be okay, now,” and he knows right then that this is a promise.

 

-x-

 

Steve takes them both: fast and hungry first, their smoke filling his lungs and burning, choking him until he can’t breathe and his skin feels like it’s on fire. He licks across Bucky’s collarbones, bites the curve of Natasha’s hipbones. They move together like they were made to do it, their fingers entwined.

It’s over too quickly. When they make love again it’s slow and intimate, making up for lost time. It’s mapping each other out with hands and mouths, lips lingering over pulse-points, building and then drawing back before anyone is able to tip over the edge until they’ve all collapsed together in an exhausted, sweaty heap.

“I love you,” Steve says, and there’s no question of which of them he’s referring to.

 

-x-

 

“What the fuck makes you think I would ever bring another goddamn terrorist onto this operation?” is what Fury asks them. _You don’t think this team is enough of a shitshow?_ is what his tone says.

“Well,” says Steve, and he glances at Natasha. Her hair is pinned off her face today, her shoulders back like she means business.

“If you don’t then we’re both resigning,” she finishes for him, and if Steve catches a ghost of a smile on her lips, he isn’t saying anything.

And that’s the end of that.

 

-x-

 

“Well if this isn’t some kind of twisted family reunion, I don’t know what is.”

Bucky curses a little as Tony pushes down extra hard on whatever it is he’s doing to his arm now. Steve narrows his eyes and Bruce, who apparently had to be present for “medical background”, raises his eyebrows bemusedly.

“You’re not my family, Robocop,” Tony says irritably. “And for the record I have _much_ better things to be spending my time on right now, I’m doing you a _favor_ and your KGB ass is going to owe me so hard later-”

“Better things than playing with seventy year old Soviet tech?” Natasha says dubiously. “Please.”

Bruce laughs at that, his hand sliding along Tony’s lower back as he adjusts his glasses and leans in to get a better look at where the steel on Bucky’s arm meets the flesh.

“I’m quitting this team,” Tony announces. “Going solo where I don’t have to deal with any of you-” he flips his welding goggles up, and points a gloved finger at Bruce. “That means you especially, Big Green,” Bruce smiles. From the table, Bucky winks at Steve and Tasha.

 

-x-

 

Steve starts sketching new symbols for Bucky as soon as the hammer and sickle are stripped away from his shoulder. Bucky lies in Natasha’s lap and watches while Steve sits at the table and works away. His fingers are stiff at first, like they don’t remember how to hold the pencil, but he warms up to it soon enough.

“Someone should draw _him_ like that,” Natasha whispers, her fingers rubbing over Bucky’s scalp. He grins up at her.

“Oh Captain our Captain?” 

From the table, Steve makes a protesting hum. “I’m going to have your cable access cut off if you keep it up,” he says mildly.

Natasha leans down and kisses Bucky before he can argue any further.

 

-x-

 

“It’s not too late to change yours too,” Steve tells Natasha. He glances at her belt, slinging an arm around her shoulders and grinning when she scoffs.

“Not in a million years, jackass.”

In the end, Bucky chooses to go with Cap’s insignia. It seems the most organic, the most natural. It feels like hope and home.

Like a good place to start.


End file.
